I’m thinking of writing what I know to get started: Namely, chemistry stuff. Crash Course! has a great intro chem video set, and there’s a lot of good intro chem resources out there, and I don’t really want to duplicate efforts there (not to mention that intro materials, by their nature, are general overviews and I’m a nitty-gritty details lover). However, I was thinking about writing stuff from a chemist’s POV, by taking one piece of common lab kit (starting with safety gear, but later moving on to stuff like Erlenmeyer flasks, Schlenk Lines, etc) and discussing when it was invented, what it’s used for, what we used before it, and why we use it. I’m taking inspiration here from Andrea Sella’s Classic Kit, but where I will differ is that I intend to focus on the why it was invented, what alternatives there are/were, and how it’s used in a practical lab setting, than on the who and the what like Sella tends to focus on.
Science history is always something that’s intrigued me, especially since so little effort seems to be put into looking into the history of science stuff, at least at my uni. I understand why we don’t teach first-year science majors about it, but c’mon, an elective or two in The History of [Science Field] would be appreciated!
Anyway, would folks be interested in that? And does anyone have any requests that I can put in the docket of Stuff To Work On?
ischemgeek 